M. C. Escher: Reality and Illusion

November 13, 2016–January 29, 2017 - The most iconic works by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, including a pair of hands drawing themselves and fish morphing into birds, are familiar to most people. This exhibition of 120 woodcuts, lithographs, mezzotints and drawings takes us deeper into both the literal and impossible worlds he created over a career that spanned five decades.

Drawn from the world’s second-largest private collection of Escher’s work, Reality and Illusion includes early figure drawings, lesser-known book illustrations, detailed Italian landscapes, the “tessellations” for which he became famous, and several examples of his signature architectural fantasies in which stairways seem to go both up and down.